{"id":36268,"date":"2025-11-10T03:59:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T04:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=36268"},"modified":"2025-11-11T02:24:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T02:24:11","slug":"a-storm-hit-alaska-now-a-native-community-is-racing-to-save-its-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=36268","title":{"rendered":"A Storm Hit Alaska. Now, a Native Community Is Racing to Save Its History."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The morning after a storm slammed into western Alaska last month, Jimmy Jones was collecting driftwood on the beach near Quinhagak, a fishing village. When he reached to pick up a log, a face stared up at him from the sand beneath.<\/p>\n

For a split second, he worried that he had found a human body. But looking closer, Mr. Jones, 27, realized it was a wooden mask with delicate traces of paint staining the surface.<\/p>\n

The remnants of Typhoon Halong, which killed at least one person and displaced hundreds from flooded homes around the region, had also swept up and carried thousands of artifacts from an archaeological site three miles south called Nunalleq. Some of the artifacts are 600 years old, left behind by the ancestors of the Yup\u2019ik who live in Quinhagak today.<\/p>\n

In addition to upending life for local residents, the storm ate into 60 feet of shoreline in a single night, destroying the dig site. In the days that followed, Quinhagak residents rushed to recover the artifacts washing ashore.<\/p>\n

There are most likely hundreds of village sites along the coast of Western Alaska, where the frozen ground can preserve objects for centuries. But excavation is rare. Like many Native communities, Quinhagak\u2019s elders initially felt that any disturbance of the site, which is considered sacred and contains human remains, would be a breach of cultural values.<\/p>\n

The artifacts were \u201cwaiting for us to tell their story,\u201d said Warren Jones, Jimmy Jones\u2019 father and the chief executive of Qanirtuuq, the corporation that owns the tribe\u2019s land and represents its interests to the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

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The morning after a storm slammed into western Alaska last month, Jimmy Jones was collecting driftwood on the beach near Quinhagak, a fishing village. When he reached to pick up a log, a face stared up at him from the sand beneath.For a split second, he worried that he had found a human body. But looking closer, Mr. Jones, 27, realized it was a wooden mask with delicate traces of paint staining the surface.The remnants of Typhoon Halong, which killed at least one person and displaced hundreds from flooded homes around the region, had also swept up and carried thousands of artifacts from an archaeological site three miles south called Nunalleq. Some of the artifacts are 600 years old, left behind by the ancestors of the Yup\u2019ik who live in Quinhagak today.In addition to upending life for local residents, the storm ate into 60 feet of shoreline in a single night, destroying the dig site. In the days that followed, Quinhagak residents rushed to recover the artifacts washing ashore.There are most likely hundreds of village sites along the coast of Western Alaska, where the frozen ground can preserve objects for centuries. But excavation is rare. Like many Native communities, Quinhagak\u2019s elders initially felt that any disturbance of the site, which is considered sacred and contains human remains, would be a breach of cultural values.The artifacts were \u201cwaiting for us to tell their story,\u201d said Warren Jones, Jimmy Jones\u2019 father and the chief executive of Qanirtuuq, the corporation that owns the tribe\u2019s land and represents its interests to the U.S. government.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36270,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36271,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36268\/revisions\/36271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}